Sweet Valley Series

[carrier76]

I can't believe there's not already a thread on these dumb, dumb books.

After reading and being very amused by the BSC thread, I seeked this out...I liked BSC better, but I was reading those books and Sweet Valley Twins at the same time...I didn't even know that Sweet Valley High existed yet. I remember that book 2 in SVT was awesome--Jessica and Elizabeth in ballet class, Elizabeth gave up her spot so Jessica could dance it! Then I read SVH and realized how annoying and asshatty that Elizabeth was.

Fuh.

[chonies]

I thought there was a thread already, too. But I'll jump in. I love SVH, but only until about #85 or so, and then it just got tiresome. I guess it was when Bantam started using photographs on the over, and not illustrations. I don't know why that make such a big difference, but it does.

When I was cleaning the garage at my mom's house last weekend I came across a paper I had written in a women's studies course about SVH. It was about the first 10 or so books and how the characters represented different teenage anxieities--Robin Wilson was more menarche than actual body image, or something, because she went through a transitional process of flowering. Le sigh. But I got an A, with glowing praise from the professor.

[jaghetersimon]

God, Elizabeth was such a doormat. And Jessica was such a bitch. Man, I could never get into these books.

Was Francine Pascal a real peson? Sounds like such a fake name.

[Peggy Lane]

Huh, I thought we had a thread too. I realize now that Elizabeth was a doormat, but my god, I loved her when I read the books late grade/early middle school. Somehow I missed the whole SVT series, but I read all the SVHs up until about book 80. My favorite of them all is the "Sweet Valley Saga" with Elisabeth, Jessamyn, the 1940s resistance worker, and the every other generation set of twins where the Elizabeth prototype met with an early death.

Because of SVH, I believe that being 5'6 and a size 6 would be the perfect body. I also believe that cocaine leads to death, and painting your room the color of a chocolate bar is the height of rebellion.

[chonies]

Francine Pascal is indeed a real person, and I think that's her real name. I can't find a link to the Bust interview with her, but it was very interesting. There are plans for an adult sequel to SVH but I haven't heard that it's released yet.

The only thing that bothered me about SVH was that when I got to high school myself, there were no bands, dances, cliques or anything. It was kind of a let down.

[Deleted]

Francine Pascal is a real person but most of the books (actually I think all of them) were ghost written. I think I read somewhere that she'd come up with a story idea and then pass it onto a writer and that someone would then flesh it out and write everything.

She mentioned in this same interview that she was working on a book called Sweet Valley Heights about everyone grown up and living in a gated community but that was mentioned years ago and I have yet to see that book be released.

I remember that I read Playing With Fire when I was in like 5th or 6th grade and I thought it was so dirty because Bruce Patman took off her bikini top when they were making out in a pool or lake or something. But then there was the even dirtier book "Out All Night" or was it "Up All Night"? where she dated the college guy (my cover had him with a pervy moustache) and he touched her boob.

Oh the horror! How dirty!

(ah, posted at the same time as above!)

[chonies]

Well, the worst part about that is Rick the Porntache Perv was the last overt sexual mention. Ever, as far as I can recall. Everything else was chaste kisses in someone's mom's Toyota or something. BORING!

I was also bothered by how Olivia kept shifting her appearance.

Did anyone ever have any of the SVH stationery or fan club stuff they advertised in the back of the books? I wanted to order it, but I never asked my mom because I could never figure out how to get her to part with a check for $1.25 or whatever for what was likely pink plastic nonsense.

[marywebgirl]

One of the thrillers had an offer for a little "spy camera" in the back that I sent away for. I'm not sure if I ever used it though.

[Deleted]

Now, looking back, I think I'd rather be friends with Elizabeth. Goody-two-shoes that she was, at least she wasn't a backstabbing tramp like Jessica. How many times did she set out to try and steal someone's boyfriend? Or humiliate some perfectly harmless person just because said person was a little geeky?

Oh, and remember Regina Morrow, or whatever her name was? She was the one who died after doing two lines of coke, because she had a heart murmur or something. And before that, she had been deaf from birth, because her mother took diet pills when she was pregnant. Only instead of using ASL, and having the "deaf accent", she read lips! Oh, and she had some miracle cure in Switzerland.


Did anyone else have the extra additions? I liked the ones that told about their family history-and how each side of the family kept meeting up, and it would fail, and not work out, until in the end, the parents came and got married?


My cousin had pretty much the whole series. I had the board game, even. Good times.


ETA: It wasn't always the Elizabeth ancestor that died. The first "Elisabeth", Jessamyn's twin did die, yes. But Samantha, the twin's great-grandmother, died in childbirth, and she was supposed to be the "Jessica" twin.

[spinsterliz]

I hated these books so damn much. My older sister loved them and was always trying to force me to read them because she was sure I'd think they were the best things ever. I read four or five of them just to get her off my back. They all sucked. Jessica must have been some kind of psychopath or something, acting the way she did. Elizabeth is too boring to even waste words on.

I think Jessica and Elizabeth were secretly related to Dawn from the BSC. All of them were so stereotypically "California": the blonde hair, the long legs, the tans, the blue eyes, etc. You'd think there wasn't one brunette or redhead in the entire state!